Lydia T. Douglas, Civil Rights and the Atlanta Student Movement 1960

Lydia Douglas grew up on Ashby Grove, near the Atlanta University Center. Her mother was a registered nurse who trained at Grady and her father owned a restaurant called Tucker Butler Cafe, located on Fair Street.

Lydia could walk to her elementary school, E. R. Carter Elementary. She attended Booker T. Washington High School, then continued her education at Clark College, now known as Clark Atlanta University. Her siblings also attended Clark College. Lydia received her master’s degree in religious education from the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta.

When asked about her experience shopping in Atlanta, Ms. Douglas recalled that although she could shop at department stores, there were separate dressing rooms for Blacks and they were watched carefully by employees of the store. They were not allowed to sit and eat at any of the lunch counters of the stores in Atlanta. Most of the department stores, including Woolworth’s and Rich’s, had lunch counters. (Atlanta History Center archives, oral history Lydia T. Douglas, Voices Across the Color Line Series, 2006)

When she rode the Atlanta trolleys, and later the buses, she always moved to the back of the vehicle.

Blacks were not allowed to use the public library. Churches, restaurants and theaters were segregated. They were only allowed to view shows at the Fox Theater from the balcony, which was accessed by the outside stairs. Many years later, when Maynard Jackson was Mayor of Atlanta, Lydia Douglas became a member of the library board. 

Douglas recalls that Lonnie King conceived the Atlanta Student Movement in 1960. King (no relation to Martin Luther King, Jr.) brought students together to form the Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights. His plan was to desegregate all public accommodations in the city of Atlanta. King and Julian Bond, along with others, were inspired after hearing about students at A&T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. The students there had staged sit-ins at a local Woolworth’s lunch counter.

The first day the Atlanta student group held a sit-in it was at the Kessler’s lunch counter. The police came and asked the students to leave. Those who did not want to go to jail left when asked. On this occasion, Ms. Douglas chose not to go to jail. The students who remained were read their rights and taken to jail.

She recalls being afraid and could not remember where she parked her car. Her friend Frank Wylie helped her locate her car and she returned to campus. The student group held a debriefing session following the sit-in.

At the second sit-in at a downtown lunch counter, she chose again not to go to jail. However, the third time was at Rich’s Magnolia Room in downtown Atlanta where she was arrested and sent to jail.

Ms. Douglas recalls her mother feared for her life. Reflecting on that time, she recalls thinking, “If I get killed it’s alright. I felt I was doing something that I could give my life for. That never bothered me at any point.”

Martin Luther King Jr. was with the students that day at Rich’s. 32 students went to jail, including Lydia Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr.

The women who went to jail were all put together. She remembers meeting other women who were in jail for various crimes. One woman had been arrested for “running numbers” and another for killing her husband. The woman who ran numbers was supporting and educating her daughters with the money she made. Ms. Douglas wanted to help the woman after jail and kept in touch for a time. Then they lost touch.

The women students had their college books taken away from them, but when a reporter from Time Magazine said that would make an interesting article, their books were suddenly returned to them by their jailers. After two weeks in jail Lydia Douglas was released.

When the students returned to college, the college president had asked the professors to make it possible for them to catch up on their studies. Getting their books back while in jail helped that happen.

After Ms. Douglas and others returned to college, there was a call out to Blacks in the community and others who wanted to participate to send their Rich’s charge card to Jesse Hill and boycott the store. Hill would hold the cards until Rich’s desegregated their lunch counters and the Magnolia Room. “It was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Douglas. This took place right before Christmas and Rich’s began to desegregate their restaurants and also to hire Black employees.

Then, “we put on our gloves and dressed as nicely as we could dress and we went and had tea at the Magnolia Room.” There were no incidents, but some people they encountered made hostile remarks.

Woolworth’s stores desegregated in 1960. Rich’s stores were desegregated in 1961.

I am able to share this history thanks to the interview of Lydia T. Douglas, held in the archives of the Atlanta History Center, as part of the Voices Across the Color Line series. The entire 2006 interview is available at atlantahistorycenter.com and on YouTube.